Books: It Swarms with em

THE COLLECTED TALES OF WALTER DE LA MARE (467 pp.)—Edited by Edward Wagenknecht—Knopf ($4.50).

Every man has the books he deserves, says Boston University's Edward Wagenknecht in his introduction to this collection—"We find, inevitably, the things that were destined for us." Thus, Wagenknecht and Britain's Walter de la Mare have proved to be made for each other. In fact, Wagenknecht paid his idol what is perhaps the highest compliment that can be given an author: he took him along to read on his honeymoon.

Not everybody would go that far, and in the two-dozen...